Brighton SEO - April 2018 Key Takeaways

1st May 2018

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Sophia Evans

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The first BrightonSEO of 2018 didn’t leave us disappointed, once again a fantastic line up of speakers and SEO experts head to Brighton to explore the latest trends in SEO, Social and the Digital Industry. From the importance of having a mobile optimised site, to starting a marketing strategy from scratch, our team have put together the key takeaways from the event below:

Marcus Tober from Searchmetrics highlighted the importance of tailoring the content you include on your website to your industry. It is imperative that the content you include in your website will reflect the ways users will interact with your website. For instance, if your website is fitness based, it’s best to include imagery and video content, whilst if your webpage is recipe based, it’s best to include reviews and important cooking information [i.e. cooking time].

The more microdata Google can extract from your website, the better your website will look on the search engine results, thus improving the experience users have with it. However, it’s important not to apply the same microdata generalisations for different niches; instead choose the best that work for your industry and execute them well.

Steve Rayson from BuzzSumo and Giles Palmer from Brandwatch led a fantastic fireside chat on the future of content sharing. Given the recent Facebook algorithm changes, prioritising content from friends and families over business and news sharing, we are seeing a decline in social sharing. At one stage, Facebook was driving more traffic to publishers than Google, however recent algorithm changes, an acceleration in “dark social” [private sharing via Whatsapp, Slack, etc.] and increased competition have created a decline in online content sharing.

Rayson suggested “It’s never been easier to create content, but it’s never been harder to gain attention from your audience.” As there is a saturation in available content, it’s difficult to get noticed. To overcome this, it’s important to generate content that can consistently gain shares and likes [“evergreen content”] or to ensure we’re reactive as possible in creating fresh content.

Hannah Butcher from Melt Content demonstrated why we should be taking influencers seriously. She provided 2 examples of influencer-related business faux pas, jeopardising their opportunity to use influencers to engage their target audience in the future. We should be capitalising on their networks and initiating fruitful relationships with these key players to produce targeted digital campaigns with increased chance of conversion.

George Driscoll spoke in detail on bringing forth great links for no money. Key tips include:

– Brand mentions

– JournoRequests

– Listings and discounts

– Interviews

Further takeaways include:

– In terms of ranking factors page load time and word counts are silly factors to consider

– Microdata depends on the niche. Fitness is not as effective on text and content. However, divorce does very well in content.

– Length of content depends on the audience.

– 3 Strategic moves to content is Content Specialisation (niche), Content Updates and to remove content. You do not cannibalise.

– Remove duplicate content as unique content is KING.

– For Local SEO you should find out for what is going in the area. You can do this through local meetups, paying for sponsorships, looking at competitors.

– For effective linking building for E-commerce, to rank higher is to offer high quality content that your customers need.

In terms of content it is key to know that exposure depends on the niche. Written content on fitness does not do so well, as videos are more effective. Divorce and law do better with content as there is more information to be put forward in that area.

Buzzsumo spoke about the fact that we can use Buzzsumo to see what content people are interested in, in a specific niche, if we’re exploring the type of content people are interested in we’ll be one step ahead in terms of getting their attention online.

Greg Gifford also said that local SEO can be helping with building relationships through the following.

My first key learning came from the first speaker I saw, Marcus Tober (SearchMetrics) but as his talk was split into 3 equally important parts, my first point will have to be split into 3 sections (much like an annoying maths question your teacher only counts as one) and they are:

“Out with the old, in with the niche”

– Content Specialisation – You can’t offer everything on one page.

– Update your content

– Don’t be afraid to remove content from your site.

Next comes from Barry Adams (Polemic Digital), who was one of the more… entertaining speakers of the day and spoke in the Mobile First category. And the main thing from this talk was to double-check EVERYTHING with your mobile site, as you need to as ready as you can be for when Google starts its transition to being 80% mobile led as opposed to desktop led.

Hannah Butcher was the only talk I got to see with regards to Influencer Marketing and the key takeaway from her that I indeed took was to basically be human when wanting to work with, and communicating with, influencers. Do your research, make sure they are the right fit for your project, introduce yourself well and be realistic and clear with expectations.

Lastly, and weirdly the talk I took the most notes during (7 pages in the free notepad given out in the Brighton SEO bags if anyone is wondering) yet what will be my shortest point as although most people will already know this, it was great to have Guy Levine [https://twitter.com/guylevine] (Return) reinforce the 3 elements to paid social success right at the beginning of his talk;

– Understanding your customers

– Effective targeting

– Knowing which button to press

It was so difficult to pick out these points without needing to expand on each of them with the great examples given by each speaker, but it was a great experience for me and I cannot wait to go in September!

Laura Hogan from Rice Media, says: discussed acquiring big links for zero costs. You can look for brand mentions where your client hasn’t been linked to and track down the journalist via Twitter, e-mail or simply call them. Doing this will enable you to get a link, but more importantly get substantial traffic to your client’s website from the link.

To do this, simply setup brand alerts via Google alerts and use Tweet deck to start looking at your hashtags to monitor new opportunities using PR and News for example.

Newsjacking is a very effective strategy to use, journalists and editors are extremely receptive to recent and topical news items speaking from experience. You can also use FOI for data to help craft localised news items.

Eleni Cashell discussed ‘how to unleash the power of unique content. Eleni is an editor for websites that gather and distribute information for students looking to choose their universities. She began by telling a story on how she had been provided information from universities, only to realise the content was not unique, 29% of the content was duplicate.